Category: Jackie Lee

I’m sure I’m not the first blogger of my age to mention how lucky today’s kids are in terms of what they can watch on TV.

In my day, it was three terrestrial channels – BBC1, BBC2 and Scottish Television – and quite frankly, most of the shows aimed at those aged under 12 were crap. Except for Tom & Jerry.

Nowadays, with all sorts of specialised channels on satellite TV, there is a wider choice, and while much of it is probably just as crap, at least they can watch something different all the time.

I just remember every single school holiday being marked on BBC1 with a re-run of two black-and-white TV series. One was called Belle & Sebastian. The other was The White Horses. The former had a really creepy theme tune that was sung in a foreign language, the latter had a theme tune that was ace.

Here’s an abridged extract from wikipedia:-

The White Horses is a 1965 television series co-produced by RTS of Yugoslavia and BR-TV of Germany. It follows the adventures of a teenage girl (played by Helga Anders) who visits a farm, run by her Uncle Dimitri (played by Helmuth Schneider), where white Lipizzaner horses are raised. It is called Počitnice v Lipici in Slovenian and Ferien in Lipizza in German. The series was a cult hit with children and comprised 13 episodes, filmed in black and white.

A dubbed version was broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1968 and repeated for many years afterwards (the dubbed soundtrack has since been lost). The theme tune, credited to “Jacky”, was sung by Jackie Lee. It became a top 10 hit in the UK charts in April 1968. Jackie Lee also had a hit with the theme tune to Rupert (The Bear) in 1970/71.